According to the New York Times, one Senator decided to figure out what costs carriers incur when it comes to their customers sending and receiving text messages.

Herb Kohl (D-Wisconsin), the chairman of the Senate antitrust subcommittee, submitted a short questionnaire to the USA's cellular providers. The inquiry, send to Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile, wanted a breakdown of message costs and pricing. While Verizon Wireless would not allow the Senators office to release its response to the inquiry, letters from the other carriers did not have promising answers.

The responses were quick to show the pricing structure for text messaging, but they did not convey any information about how much it actually costs a carrier to send a message. Since the responses from AT&T and T-Mobile were published by Sen. Kohl's office, the carriers have become involved in 20+ class action lawsuits regarding price-fixing on text messaging services.

Quick to defend themselves, T-Mobile "called Mr. Kohl’s attention to the fact that its average revenue per text message, which takes into account the revenue for all text messages, has declined by more than 50 percent since 2005.” However, according NYT's Randall Stross, the amount of texts sent since 2005 has increased ten-fold. An estimated 3.3 trillion text messages are to be sent in 2009. If figures from the Times and organizations like CITA are true, then the cellular industry will make more money off of texts alone than the U.S. spends in two years fighting the war in Iraq. That may be hard to imagine, but 3.3 trillion texts at 20 cents a pop... you do the math.

According to Stross, there is little to no cost to send and receive text messages. The wired connection between cell towers has ample bandwidth for the messages, so some would think it's the wireless aspect? Wrong. "Perhaps the costs for the wireless portion at either end are high--spectrum is finite," says Stross. "But text messages are not just tiny; they are also free riders, tucked into what’s called a control channel, space reserved for operation of the wireless network. That’s why a message is so limited in length: it must not exceed the length of the message used for internal communication between tower and handset to set up a call. The channel uses space whether or not a text message is inserted."

So where does the mentality of "the more, the better" fit into all this? Well, since many cell phone users have an unlimited texting plan attached to their monthly bill, they probably think they are getting a great deal. Wrong, again. "Customers with unlimited plans, like diners bringing a healthy appetite to an all-you-can-eat cafeteria, might think they’re getting the best out of the arrangement. But the carriers, unlike the cafeteria owners, can provide unlimited quantities of “food” at virtually no cost to themselves--so long as it is served in bite-sized portions."

While all the facts have yet to be seen, its seems as though the cellular carriers are making like bandits when it comes to texting. Hopefully one of class action lawsuits will bear some consumer-friendly fruit.

Now more than ever, shopping over the internet is second nature for many in first world countries. From Amazon to buy.com to eBay, millions of dollars are transferred electronically every day between buyer and seller.

With such massive amounts of consumer activity online, technology like VeriSign's Secure Socket Layer (SSL), help keep honest shoppers safe from the perils of phishing attacks and fraud. With SSL software, and a little bit of internet savvy, one can keep themselves and their bank accounts safe from fraudulent websites.

That was, up until today. While I wouldn't go sounding the doomsday alarms just yet, an international team of internet security experts managed to hack SSL.

The actual feat was the breaking of one of the MD5 algorithms used in issuing security certificates for websites. Security certificates are used to confirm that a website is legitimate and not an attempt to mislead the visitor.  Once the team broke though the algorithm, they were able to hack into the RapidSSL.com website. After this, the team was able to produce false security certificates that had identical MD5 hash values as legitimate certificates.

According to the report, "the team that did the research work included independent researchers Jacob Appelbaum and Alexander Sotirov, as well as computer scientists from the Centrum Wiskunde&Informatica, the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, the Eindhoven University of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley." As of the original story, the team was set to show off their accomplishments at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin.

While the findings are certainly a feat, and a frightening one at that, the team responsible along with companies like Microsoft have downplayed the vulnerability. "This new disclosure does not increase risk to customers significantly, as the researchers have not published the cryptographic background to the attack, and the attack is not repeatable without this information," said Microsoft. So, assuming the detrimental information stays out of the wrong hands, we are all safe.

Despite downplaying the severity of the hack, one team member made a point of saying internet security needs to change. "It's a wake-up call for anyone still using MD5," said David Molnar, a team member and Berkeley graduate student. Tim Callan, VeriSign's vice president of product marketing, said RapidSSL.com will stop issuing MD5-based digital certificates by the end of January and is atempting to get its customers onto newer security products.

Owners of the iPhone 3G and fans of network freedom have been waiting for this day for a long time. The masterminds behind iPhone ‘pwnage’ have finally released an unlocking solution for the iPhone 3G.

Unlike the unlocking (and jailbreaking) method for the for the 2G iPhone, which relies on external tools and modified firmware, the iPhone 3G unlock appears to work with an application install.

The iPhone Dev-Team posted details of the unlock, codenamed “yell0wsnow,” on its blog. Those who wanted an unlocked iPhone 3G were warned not to upgrade the baseband software that came with Apple’s updates, but the yell0wsnow release now appears to require the very latest baseband that’s a part of the 2.2 iPhone firmware version.

Users who want an unlocked phone will have upgrade to the latest firmware, jailbreak using QuickPwn, and then install the yell0wsnow application via jailbroken app managers Cydia or Installer.

The first couple of versions of yell0wsnow were quickly updated following user reports that the software hack doesn’t work. As of version 0.9.4, which is still considered a beta, it appears that many of the issues are fixed.

Are you going to unlock your iPhone 3G? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments below!

For many Zune owners, new year’s eve was a day of frustration. Wednesday saw floods of reports from owners of 30GB Zunes who said their players were crashing. At the same time.

From midnight on the 31st, the Zune’s operating systems freezing up. Zuners reported that the device would begin to load, but would freeze, locking up on the loading screen.

Microsoft has acknowledged the problem but did not offer a fix. "Customers using the Zune 30 might experience problems starting their players," says the company on the Zune website. "We’re aware of the problem and are working to correct it. The Zune Social might be slow or inaccessible. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for your patience!"

However, it seems as though the problem is no more. The BBC reports that, as of yesterday, Zune devices should boot and load as normal. Apparently the problem was all down to the fact that 2008 was a leap year and had an extra day for which software on the Zune was not prepared.

Microsoft spokesman Brian Eskridge says that the this should have been corrected on January 1 when the Zune’s software consults with the internal clock and overcomes the Zune-boggling extra day. Let us know if you were affected and if your Zune has since righted itself.